Gailey: Former maverick McCain reduced to pandering

I should no longer feel astonishment when the editors of The St. Petersburg Times write as though they live in an ideological bubble cut off from realistic political observations. While most pundits are noting Barack Obama's shift toward the center, Philip Gailey uses his Sunday opinion column to call Republican candidate John McCain a panderer.

Is he wearing infinite blinders along with a special set of earplugs that deaden the auditory nerves?

With the netroots in a frenzy over Obama's perceived vacillation on the Iraq War after two speeches in one day and now a op-ed column intended to make sure everything is clear, Gailey puts the focus on McCain.

And here's the kicker. After leading off with the header "So long, maverick; hello panderer," Gailey forgets to include any concrete examples of McCain's supposed pandering. No, I'm not kidding. Gailey leads off by criticizing McCain for his foreign policy emphasis (that is, Iraq) rather than on economic policy. Those blinders and earplugs must be doing their work well. McCain has emphasized a robust and realistic energy policy that includes a key component favored by voters: Drilling domestically for fuel. Gailey might have used that as an example of McCain's pandering if he hadn't started out by suggesting that McCain was ignoring domestic policy. Come to think of it, what kind of pandering can a candidate really do in the first place by emphasizing foreign policy? Wouldn't pandering work much better with an emphasis on domestic policy?

The Arizona Republican, who once said economics was not his strong suit, has been struggling to convince voters that he feels their economic pain, which he proposes to ease with more tax cuts, deregulation and trade.

If McCain really wanted to pander on the economy then wouldn't he be better served to say that he would raise taxes only on the very rich or something like that?

That's it. Gailey's impotent salvo is spent. The rest of his column is a mix of dopey criticisms of McCain that have nothing specific to do with pandering, unless we count Gailey pandering to his fellow progressive editors and staff.